Do we know when the word "bitcoin" appeared for the first time? Are we 100% sure it was in THE PAPER?
The domain name bitcoin.org was registered two months before the whitepaper was released.
I was wondering why it is "bitcoin". (Someone with more advanced linguistic skills could probably help a lot).
I had always assumed it was a natural development from Szabo's bit gold, with the word coin chosen instead to reflect that fact it is a peer to peer currency.
Is "coin" the only word which could be used? "note", "check", "bill"?
I think these are worse. Checks depend on the authority of a centralized third party to be cashed in. Note or bill could work, but these words are not universal across the English speaking world. Coin is, on the other hand.
I think already a decade ago "e-" was used for "electronic" versions of given words, like e-mail or e-market.
eCash already existed -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcashAnd we have also the root of the whole concept, elliptic curve. If we would take "sec" from secp256k1, "seccoin" could be also extended to "secure coin".
Satoshi was aware of the possible need to transition to a different signature scheme in the future, which would make "sec" a poor choice -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2133